Everyone is very aware of the ongoing political, social and economic uncertainties here and elsewhere in the world. What no one can clearly see is where we will be in a month’s times let alone three months’ time! The medium to long term business planning event horizon is now about a week in advance.

So, given the slightly curious landscape we find ourselves in, what should we all be doing during the next few weeks? Getting down to business as usual to a certain extent but you would be a fool if you were not concerned about what will happen over the next few weeks and months. For some industries the issue is just about logistics. The supermarkets know people need to eat, so their job is to get the materials into the shops and try and keep price rises within acceptable boundaries. The demand for essentials will continue. For those of us who are dealing with products and/or services that could be considered as non-essential, the consideration about what we can do to mitigate risks are a little wider.

Uncertainty is no stranger 

Keep in mind that uncertainty is no longer a new concept. People have been living with uncertainty for several years now. To be honest, events and uncertainties that would have brought about a virtual halt in non-essential expenditure from many households back before Covid-19 etc, are now eliciting more of a ‘Meh! Let’s get on with it’ response from our clients and new enquirers.

What can you do to mitigate risk? 

We can’t control the political landscape, inflationary issues or the behaviour of consumers. What we can do is start to put a few things into place, we can quickly put into play as required:

1.      Agree, in advance, with key staff members what they are happy to go with in terms of ‘special offers’ should you want to react rapidly to a difficult market.

2.      Look at where you can bundle services or products together at a ‘special price’ to allow you to stand out from others.

3.      Which services/products are most at risk of a negative impact from a major financial crisis or extended recession? Can you move staff and resources elsewhere at short notice if needed?

4.      Which services/products are likely to see an increase in demand? Think about increasing promotional work and preparing to increase the teams working in those areas.

5.      Go through your ‘work in progress’ and assess where there are high-risks. Can you mitigate the risk or put in an interim bill to reduce your exposure?

6.      Do you need to tighten credit control procedures and reduce payment due days or even introduce payment on receipt?

7.      Can you tighten up risk appraisal of risk procedures at the sales end of your business?

8.      Take more money ‘on account’ at the start of instructions. You will then have more cash in the bank and a better indicator that new and existing clients are able and willing to pay.

9.      Prepare some templates that can be edited easily and quickly to promote a number of different services/products across a range of social media platforms and your own website.

10.  Be seen. Use the likes of ‘tweetdeck’ and ‘hootsuite’ to schedule a ‘tweet-storm’ when needed for different services and products and schedule outbound campaigns in advance on mail chimp. You can always delete them all if they are not needed.

These are just a few ideas of how to start trying to mitigate against events which may or may not happen. Maybe there will be no long term impact on business but it’s going to be an ‘interesting’ Autumn. rhw can help across all aspects of legal support for the business sector. email:  call: 01483 302000